An Interview With Dr. James Pennebaker

What might happen if we invited people into a lab and asked them to write about a painful event they had never fully talked through — would that change their current health? With me is James Pennebaker, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who developed the expressive writing method that has propagated rapidly over the past forty years across industries and healing practices and even shaped my own work on the therapeutic effects of writing about difficult experiences, memories, and emotions. One of the appealing aspects is that for millennia we've recognized the value of putting distressing events into words — it's the foundation of prayer, of confession, and of intimacy between people. It was such a pleasure to finally meet you, James; I was delighted when you answered me, and when I was traveling to Austin we had the chance to sit down together. Your research has informed my work for many years, so being able to interview you in person felt like a dream, and I wanted to have you here so we could explore your ideas about what you call expressive writing in depth. My audience has a great deal to learn about how writing can heal, and when I first began teaching my own writing-based technique it was born of experience and intuition — I knew it helped, though I didn't understand the mechanisms until I discovered your studies. Thank you for joining me. Thank you very much — meeting you has been a real thrill for me too — and everything you shared about your work is clearly significant and dovetails nicely with much of what I've done over the years. So, can you tell us a bit about what expressive writing is? So the idea of expressive writing is

To give a little context: years ago, when I was a junior faculty member, I was confronting some personal difficulties. I had just gotten married, and—surprisingly to some—marriages sometimes go through rough patches. Fortunately, my wife and I have now been married for over fifty years, but at the time it was hard. One night I woke up, retreated to another room, and began to write, trying to untangle what was happening inside me—why I felt the way I did and why she felt the way she did. Putting those emotions and thoughts into words was a shocking experience; it was more powerful than I expected. We worked through many of our problems, and I largely forgot about that episode, only returning to this kind of writing occasionally. I didn’t think much of it until some years later when I was studying health issues. In a large project where we asked people about their lives, we included a question on the questionnaire about whether, before age 17, they had experienced a traumatic sexual event. Those who answered yes reported many more physical health problems, which intrigued me. As I explored further, what stood out about traumatic sexual experiences was that most people kept them secret. I started to see that trauma harms people generally, but secrecy makes the harm much worse. That observation prompted an experiment with my students that mirrored the earlier research design: we invited people to participate in a study where they would write for 15 minutes a day over four days. Half of the participants were instructed to write about a traumatic experience—preferably one they had not previously discussed in detail—and the other half wrote about superficial topics. What we found was striking: those who wrote about upsetting experiences subsequently went to the doctor at about half the rate of people in the control group who wrote about trivial matters. That finding marked the beginning of this approach in my mind. I came to conceptualize it as a practical method: if people set aside three or four days, 10–15 minutes each day, to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about something weighing on them—whether a major trauma or a more minor but persistent worry—writing could be therapeutic. We published the initial study in 1986; since then, more than 2,000 studies have examined expressive writing, and the literature has grown so large it’s hard to keep up. What’s interesting is that I never intended this to be a lifelong, everyday task. I don’t write daily; usually only once or twice a year, maybe three times if it’s been a very bad year. Often I’ll wake in the middle of the night and write for a bit, and frequently the feeling recedes and I go back to sleep. Sometimes it lingers and becomes more complicated, but I’ve always thought of writing as a tool to keep in your back pocket for when you need it. Your practice of having people write twice a day is not identical to the original method but is quite similar, and the results align with what formal studies find: people tend to feel better and it seems to help them process difficult material. You asked what “processing” means. The word gets used a lot, and I’ve learned that trauma tends to keep thoughts and feelings in an active, charged state; they don’t naturally move into the calmer category of memory. I’ve done a lot of research into that phenomenon. One line of inquiry looked at how people write: what changes in their language as they put upsetting experiences into words? With students, we developed a computer program to analyze the texts participants produced, and we found that those who gained the most benefit changed their writing over the days. They began to construct a narrative, a way of making sense of the event. If participants wrote in the same manner each day, they generally did not improve. Those who showed progress used writing to step back and reframe the experience—to organize the chaotic memory into a story. That process resembles how memories are typically handled: initially messy, over time structured into a coherent account. There’s a danger, however. People often form a story to explain a painful event and then get stuck on that story, believing it fully captures what happened. Traumas are complex and affect many domains—daily habits, diet, exercise, social interactions, sleep—and a narrow narrative can become a limiting, inaccurate belief. Writing’s value is that it lets you weigh different pieces of information and consider how the event might have shaped you. Clinically, we sometimes label these constricted interpretations as “trauma-driven beliefs.” Everyone has flexibility in how they interpret things, and trauma treatment must be careful not to invalidate someone’s experience while gently loosening those rigid meanings so a fuller picture can emerge. To illustrate how processing unfolds in real life, I’ll tell a personal example. A few years ago I witnessed a horrific car crash on a busy night on Interstate 5 near Los Angeles. Traffic came to a halt; after twenty minutes I got out of our car to see what had happened. There were people helping, debris everywhere, shattered glass on the road. I checked on the occupants and sat with a man lying under a tarp who seemed badly injured but conscious. For about 45 minutes I stayed with him while we waited for emergency services. Nearby, his wife had died and he did not yet know. Watching the whole scene and then having to decide how to tell him—how much to say—was devastating. After the ambulance took people away, I got back into the car with my family and could barely speak. Their casual comments about where to eat felt jarringly tone-deaf; they didn’t know I had just witnessed someone die and been with the man who had not realized his loss. It took me time to process the event. I was careful about whom I spoke with, gradually confiding in a few trusted listeners who were good at holding space, and I still carry the memory of that trip—the whole journey to Los Angeles is tinged by that night. I’ve found that EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) can help move such events into the calmer memory category, where they lose their charge. Over the years many of my own triggers have become more neutral. One lesson I’ve learned is the importance of being one’s own experimenter. Unlike some, I had a relatively uneventful childhood, and for me expressive writing sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. So I try little variations to see what helps: writing with my finger in the air when I didn’t want to wake my wife, using my non-dominant hand, trying poetry instead of prose. I encourage others to experiment too. There is no single correct method for expressive writing; what helps one person at one time might not help another or even the same person at another moment. Track outcomes—sleep quality, resting heart rate, alcohol use, how much you ruminate—and see what changes. I was glad when Andrew Huberman devoted an episode to this work because, despite the broader industry that emphasizes talk therapy and medication, there are accessible self-directed methods that can be surprisingly powerful for managing difficult feelings, trauma, depression, and anxiety. Regarding the relationship between expressive writing and mutual-help programs: the 12-step tradition, as invented by Bill W. in the 1930s, included the practice of writing down one’s wrongs and then reading them to another person. That structured writing-plus-sharing is different from venting and appears central to AA’s value: it creates a new space in which a person can become a better version of themselves. I haven’t systematically studied AA—partly because the organization has often resisted formal research to protect anonymity—yet I have spoken with members and seen that when people write and then discuss their material in a supportive group it can be beneficial, although not universally so. I once considered whether talking alone to another person might replicate writing’s benefits, but I realized you cannot control how the listener will respond. Sometimes sharing a written narrative with a trusted other is helpful, but it can also complicate things if the listener reacts poorly. That’s part of why writing can be preferable: it’s a way to process privately and safely, without immediately triggering the physiological arousal that recalling a trauma can produce. For some people, talking with sympathetic listeners is re-triggering; they become dysregulated and can’t take in new information. Writing often bypasses those reactive neural pathways and permits expression without immediate external emotional feedback. When people do choose to read their writing to another person, it helps if that person understands how to witness—how to listen without fixing, advising, or minimizing. In our teachings we call this role “being a buddy.” A buddy should have used the technique themselves and grasp the spirit of supportive witnessing: simple acknowledgment—“thank you for reading that,” or “I’ve had similar fears and resentments sometimes”—is often enough. It’s countercultural to restrain the urge to jump in with advice; the buddy’s job is to witness, not to solve. In our version we keep the task simple by grouping negative emotions into two categories—fears and resentments—so people don’t overthink; the goal is to get things onto the page and sometimes to read them aloud to a trusted listener, which can break the secrecy that keeps trauma stuck. Almost all traumas have social components—they involve other people—so breaking the silence is a way of reintegrating that material into one’s life. If someone wants to learn expressive writing, books on the subject are a good start; many present similar core messages. My practical advice is straightforward: find 15–20 minutes somewhere private, promise yourself you will write continuously, and explore your deepest thoughts and feelings about what’s bothering you. Ask yourself how this relates to other areas of your life—your childhood, relationships, career, or sense of self. You might begin thinking one topic is central and discover during writing that another issue is driving the distress—that’s fine. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or style; this is for you alone. What to do with the writing afterward varies widely. Some people keep everything; others never reread it because it’s painful. I rarely go back to my old pieces because reading them is miserable, though others may edit and polish their accounts until they become a new document. Try different forms—poetry, song, narrative—and see what fits. Some teachers advocate a gentler approach: briefly brush away the top layer of what’s on your mind, like an archaeologist with a soft brush, letting deeper material surface on its own rather than digging aggressively for it. Writing a couple of times a day for emotional relief can be more sustainable for many people than intense excavation. People who are highly analytical often want to mine for grand patterns immediately; I usually advise against forcing that. Let patterns emerge naturally—sometimes simply seeing something clearly allows it to dissipate. Practical matters that are genuinely real—like unpaid taxes—won’t evaporate by insight alone; they require concrete action. So face reality where it matters, and use writing to help reveal what does and doesn’t need attention. Early on, there was some pushback. I once spoke in Germany to a group of psychoanalysts about these findings and received polite applause but few questions; later I heard criticisms in the halls. Some people misinterpreted my work as claiming that brief writing sessions could overhaul personality in a few 15-minute blocks—an absurd reading of the results—but that was the primary resistance I encountered. Cognitive-behavioral therapists and other clinicians have largely seen the value in the basic idea. Still, the culture of mental health care tends to be expert-centric, implying that the professional holds the healing power and the patient passively receives it. In reality, much healing is done by people themselves on a day-to-day basis; professionals support and guide as needed. I did once get a scolding from the editor of a major online journal who said people should be warned never to use these methods without a qualified therapist present. That felt disconnected from reality: most people will not always have a therapist nearby when they meditate or write. Of course, guidance is important for people at risk of becoming isolated or who may lose traction; but for routine symptom management, individuals can and should take responsibility. In workshops I teach what I call the “flip-out rule”: if, while writing, you feel you’re about to lose control, stop writing or switch topics. You are responsible for your own safety—stop if you need to. Writing gives you both a gas pedal and a brake. It’s true that writing about sad material can leave people feeling down afterward; sometimes there’s a residue of sadness, which is natural. To help settle, many people rest or meditate after writing. I learned Transcendental Meditation, but I don’t require anyone to learn a formal technique—simply resting the mind is often enough. If someone prefers a mantra, choose a neutral, non-verb word—avoid ambitious or pressure-laden phrases. After a short rest, another layer of settling often occurs and people emerge calmer, clearer, and sometimes creatively refreshed. In my household we joke about “chuntering,” an English term my husband uses for muttering to oneself—when that internal chuntering starts, it’s usually a sign I need to write; once the thoughts are on the page, new ideas and openness to the present moment often return. Some of our early studies were conducted in the late afternoon with college students who then had free time after writing; those studies tended to show stronger effects than ones run during the school day when students returned to class immediately. That suggests the benefit is not confined to the 15 minutes of writing itself: the experience carries on as participants think about it, dream about it, and reflect during the hours that follow. In interviews after the writing sessions, several participants were surprised when we asked whether they’d dreamed about what they’d written—clearly, the process was active across much of their day, not just in brief blocks. Looking ahead, it’s been remarkable to see expressive writing take root in so many domains—business, law enforcement, religious contexts, and more. I’m generally hopeful about how people and cultures adapt useful tools. I expect expressive writing to continue evolving to fit the needs of different communities. Alongside writing, other emerging approaches—psychedelic-assisted therapies in trials, body-centered practices, and simply exercising outdoors—are gaining attention because they help regulate the nervous system. Movement, collective activities like dancing, marching, or singing together, and other forms of embodied practice can be profoundly re-regulating—akin to applying WD-40 to the natural processes by which we handle stress, trauma, and grief. I see a shift away from a rigid model that places all authority in the expert and toward approaches that empower people to manage their health daily. Those professionals who support everyday self-care, rather than only offering occasional sessions, will increasingly be valued. Thank you, Jamie—this conversation will continue, and it will be interesting to watch how these approaches spread. It’s been a pleasure to meet in person and to discuss the science and practice that underpin why writing can be so useful. Thank you.